Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue

It's been quite a while since my last update because a lot has been going on. I can't remember the last time I spent a weekend at home! I've been packing as much as possible into my weekends before the the weather in the PNW turns south (it's been gorgeous here since June).

In the middle of August was the Santiam Alpine Club's (the club I took climb school through this spring) annual Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue class. The class was on Elliot Glacier on the north side of Mt. Hood. We climbed up to the glacier early Saturday morning and spent the day practicing traveling in rope teams on ice, snow, and rock, learning and practicing crampon and ice axe technique and rope management. We also learned and practiced installing ice screws and setting up climbing and rappelling anchors in ice. We spent the night up on the glacier. I didn't use a tent and just slept in my sleeping bag inside a bivy sack. As opposed to the last freezing night I spent on a glacier, when climbing on Mt. Hood in the spring, I was plenty warm that night. With the exception of a little bit of rain and having to cover my head with my jacket, I slept pretty well. Here's our camp. My bivy is the dark green one on the far let of the picture.


We woke up with the sun on Sunday (I have more, incredible pictures of the sunrise on flickr). Here's the view from my bivy sack.


We spent Sunday practicing using pickets to set snow anchors and learning and practicing how to setup rope and pulley systems to pull fallen climbers out of a crevasse. I got to rappel 30 feet down into a crevasse and relax as my team members pulled me out. Here's one of my teammates rappelling into the crevasse.


I have a GoPro video of me rappelling into and being pulled out of the crevasse that I'll upload as soon as I have a chance to edit it.

Check out the picture of our camp above, then take a look at where Gabe's tent (the orange and gray one) was when we returned to camp Sunday afternoon. Luckily there was no damage.


I learned a lot that weekend and had a great time. I was looking even more forward to the Ice Climbing class a couple weeks later!

Mt. Washington

The last summer climb I got in before the rain started was Mt. Washington, two weekends ago. Mt. Washington is another technical peak with a couple of good pitches to climb and pretty significant exposure. Here's a view up the ridge toward the summit.


The hike to the ridge went through a significant recent burn area. I didn't take any pictures while we were hiking through it, but this picture from the summit gives you an idea of the extent of the burn. I'd estimate that more than 60% of the trees all the way around the mountain, within a 10 mile radius were burned.

Click here for the full size. You'll see smoke on the right side of the picture from a fire that was burning in the Three Sister Wilderness while we were on the mountain.

The climb up the ridge toward the summit block was a lot of fun, and a good warm up, with a lot of scrambling and exposed rocky sections. When we finally reached the saddle beneath the summit block, Our first team already had all the ropes set up, and had already summited (SAC had a large group climbing, so we split into three smaller groups and staggered our departure times to avoid congestion on the summit. I was in the middle group).

He's a view up the most technical section of the climb.

You can see one of our climbers roped up and about to climb. The rope generally follows the route and you can see the heads of the belayers at the top of the pitch.

Here's a picture of me, just past the crux on my way up. The people below me are where the above photo was taken from.

Below and to my left, the mountain drops away for a couple thousand feet.

Here I am after summiting, rappelling off the edge of the pitch in the picture above.


I got a bunch of video climbing up and rappelling off of the summit block and I'll post it as soon as I have a chance to edit it.

We had great views of Three Fingered Jack (on the left, which we were planning on climbing this weekend, but cancelled because of the rain) and Mt. Jeffereson. They're both on my list to climb.


Here's a picture of a couple of fulgurites on the top of the highest rock on the summit. Fulgurites are glass tubes that form when lighting strikes the rock.


Even though we split into three groups, the last two groups ended up summiting and descending together. Having so many people on the top of the mountain slowed us down a bit and we ended up descending just before sunset, hustling to get off the mountain proper and back on a trail before dark. We had to hike the ~5 miles back to the car after sunset, but the full moon lit the trail well enough to hike with our headlamps off.

I did get some amazing pictures of the sunset. Here's a couple, but check out the rest on flickr.